Honeymoon Alone: A Novel

by Nicole Macaulay

  “You try to stop Mom when she’s on a mission,” he says, laughing. “Don’t worry. I didn’t tell anyone anything. I just ran ahead to warn you.”

  “They’re here?” I exclaim.

  Before he can say another word, my mother’s shrill tones echo in the hallway outside my door and I fight the urge to climb out the window to hide at Mrs. Suzayaki’s house. Our fire escapes do connect, after all.

  I open the door as my whole family bustles in, complaining about the cold and the blizzard. I hunch my shoulders and prepare for what’s coming – the incessant questions, the lectures, all of it. But instead I’m just hugged. I mean it. They all begin hugging me at once. My mom, Jake, Mary, Julie, Marian, Samantha, Cora, Tristan, my dad – all of them.

  “How was London?”

  “Tell me everything.”

  “Did you see Prince William and Kate?”

  “Were the French people rude in Paris?”

  “Was the food good?”

  They’re all speaking at once. Samantha – three months pregnant Samantha, my beautiful sister-in-law – begins unwrapping take-out containers. I’m so confused. We’ve never had Tuesday Night Dinner here. I’ve offered my place up since I moved in four years ago, but we’ve always done it at my parents’ or at Charles and Samantha’s place.

  “Oh, are these your pictures?” Julie squeals, looking at my computer and petting Ricky who hasn’t budged at all, in spite of the commotion in his living space.

  “Yes,” I say, walking toward her. I stop in my tracks when I realize that everyone is following me. I look over my shoulder and they all freeze too – looking confused.

  “Is something wrong?” my mother asks. She eyes the computer screen, which is frozen on a photo of Cary and me inside of a red London phone booth. “Are there indecent pictures on there?”

  I roll my eyes. “Of course not,” I say. “You have to stop thinking that any one of us could just become slutty all of a sudden, Mom.”

  “Yeah,” Marian agrees. “I’ve always found that so disheartening.”

  “I’m just living in the present,” my mom says defensively. “This is not the 1950’s.”

  “Have you looked around Lucy’s place lately, Ma?” Jake asks. He looks at my I Love Lucy posters and Honeymooners (of all things) tin signs. “It’s basically the 1950s in here.”

  That’s when I notice it. Jake and Mary, I mean. They’re holding hands by the front door. And I realize that Mary was right. There’s something here that’s just so right.

  “Who’s the hottie?” Julie asks, gesturing toward the photo of Cary and me.

  Mary walks over to the computer and gasps. “Cary Stewart,” she answers.

  “You know him?” Jake asks her.

  “He was sort of a fixture in our class. Every girl’s dream.”

  I smile. Knowing Cary now feels so different than just thinking I knew him. His personality makes all the difference in the whole Cary picture.

  “Mary reached out to Cary to ask him to keep an eye on me in London,” I explain, linking my arm through Mary’s even as I roll my eyes playfully at her.

  I regard her closely. She somehow looks different. This in-love version of her is so assured and confident – almost more mature somehow.

  “So you and my brother, huh?” I say casually, smirking at her.

  She stops in her tracks and just stares at me. “Is it weird to see?” she asks, almost shyly. And Mary is never shy. With me anyway.

  I wrap my arm around her shoulders and tug her to me. “It’s only weird to me that you guys look so perfect together and we never figured it out at any point in the past twenty years.”

  She laughs. “I know.” She stops and turns to me, her brown eyes wide and incredulous. “I swear Lucy, it was that stupid psychic at the wedding, telling me I had already met the man of my dreams.”

  That stops me and in a nanosecond the smile fades from my face. “The psychic?”

  “It sounds so stupid, I know,” she whispers intensely. “A psychic that probably works at the Haley Mall with a crystal ball and everything. Listening to her makes me, like, a crazy person, right?”

  In her eyes, I see it all only too well. The hope. The uncertainty. The self-deprecation. And I get it. Oh, do I get it.

  “I don’t think it’s stupid at all,” I assure her.

  A little while later, we are all eating Chinese takeout, gathered around the laptop in the living room. Mary is sitting in the chair, while Jake sits on the chair’s arm with his arm draped lightly over her. My parents, and Charles and Samantha are sitting on the couch. Marian and Tom have pulled two chairs from the kitchen into the living room and are cuddling little Tristan, who’s telling them some very animated story. And Cora, Julie and I are relaxing on the floor, leaning against the couches. I’ve set the laptop up on the entertainment center, right in front of the TV, hit “go” again on the slideshow and now – we’re watching my trip play out before us like it’s a movie. And that is just so much better than watching it alone.

  “That was the coffee place that I went every morning,” I explain, looking longingly at a photo of Hugging Mugs.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” Julie whispers to me.

  I rest my head on Julie’s shoulder and stare at the photos. “I am too.”

  After a few more London photos tick on by, Julie looks at me. “I guess you heard my news.”

  At that, I turn to look at her, to meet her gaze. “Yes,” I say. I shake my head. “I had no idea that you were so –” I search for the right words. “–Unfulfilled,” I finally say.

  “I wasn’t,” she says, shrugging, scrunching her nose up. “I liked being a doctor.”

  “But you didn’t love it.”

  She catches my eyes with her own hazel ones and fixes me with an intense look. “It was Marian’s wedding, actually, that changed me.”

  “Oh God, you too?” I burst out, and Julie looks shocked at my words. “Did the psychic tell you to drop the scalpel and pick up the lipstick…or was she completely vague and odd, leaving you to have to figure it all out yourself?” I feel my cheeks flush because…this is ridiculous. “I hope Marian paid her really well for all the lives she uprooted.”

  Julie grabs my arm and waits patiently until I meet her gaze.

  “Okay, first of all, in case you don’t remember, I made fun of Marian endlessly for every aspect of her ‘80s wedding, and I absolutely ridiculed her choice to have a psychic,” she explains slowly. “I wouldn’t have been caught dead in that woman’s tent having my palms read or seeing my future in some loony lady’s crystal ball.”

  I look down, a little embarrassed. “She didn’t read palms, actually.”

  Julie laughs. “It was before the wedding,” she says. “The makeup artist’s assistant did the makeup for Marian’s two friends and that one junior bridesmaid, remember?”

  I nod, remembering how thankful I had been that the makeup artist herself would be doing mine and Julie’s makeup in addition to Marian’s. Her assistant had seemed pretty hung over.

  “I saw them after she was done and they were all near tears. They looked like tangerines.”

  “We all looked a little odd that day,” I say to that, careful to keep my voice low so that Marian doesn’t overhear.

  “They looked really bad and they seemed really sad about it,” she recalls. “So I snuck into the bathroom with them and fixed their makeup. All of them. You know I’ve always loved doing that anyway,” she adds.

  I nod, listening.

  “I like being a doctor. I do. I’ve delivered great news to patients, witnessed babies being born, seen lives saved. But honestly – at least half the time I drove home in tears. The other side of it – the sad news side – was too much. Plus, no one looks good in hospital gowns under those fluorescent lights. I want happiness. Magic. I want beauty. My world has been missing a lot of that. I cannot tell you how happy and proud I felt when those girls smiled and thanked me. I know it wasn’t really mag
ic, but it felt like it.”

  “They looked great,” I agree.

  “Please,” she says deadpan. “They looked better than all of us. Including Marian.”

  I laugh. “Hey, you’ll never get an argument from me on how good I looked that day.”

  She looks at the slideshow, but I can tell she’s not really looking at it. “When you went away, something just clicked,” she says. “You’ve never done anything out of the ordinary. You always stayed in the lines, followed the rules. This was so unlike you. And when we talked to you on the phone, you said it was just something you had to do. You sounded so free.” She grabs my hand and really holds my gaze. “I can’t tell you how that made something inside of me just snap. You did what you had to do for you in some kind of insane moment of clarity or whatever that was. And you didn’t let anyone stop you. You didn’t seem to care about what anyone thought. Honestly, that’s how people should live their lives. Not caring about what everyone else thinks, just doing what makes them happy. So that’s what I’m doing.”

  “Well, I’m glad.” I hug Julie to me.

  “I’ll be going to school for it, I’m going to do weddings, parties, you name it. I’m going to be amazing.”

  “You’re already amazing.”

  “Thanks, Luce.”

  “Who’s that?” Samantha asks and I look at the screen.

  My breath catches as something in my stomach tightens. It’s Oliver. The photo I took of him at the end of our night in Paris – when he took me by that For Sale sign that was crossed out. He looks so handsome, so happy. That really was a perfect day. We had a few of those, I guess. At least they seemed perfect.

  “Just someone I met out there,” I finally manage, tearing my eyes away from the photo. Everyone is looking at me with questioning, interested glances.

  “He’s cute,” Samantha eventually says.

  I laugh. “I’ll agree with you on that.”

  I catch Charles’s eye and he just nods slowly, a knowing gleam in his eye. It looks like his mind is fast at work. I really hope he doesn’t decide to launch into a brotherly lecture now. He’s been so good throughout this whole thing.

  “These pictures are very good,” my mom says seriously, looking at the computer. “They look like pictures you’d see in a book at the bookstore.”

  A new song begins and my heart gives a lurch. It’s that song – the one Oliver and I danced to the night that all hell broke loose. Oh, what are the chances? Instead of feeling embarrassed or even sad, the song just conjures up feelings of contentment. Everything about the trip was perfect until that dance ended. And no amount of drama can ever take the amazing memories and stories – the picture-perfect time I had – away.

  I rest my head back and let the movie of my trip play as my heart swells. No matter how it all turned out, I don’t regret it. Not one moment of it. I mean, my scenery included Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower. I have a million stories to go along with every snapshot.

  That psychic told me to pay attention and that’s exactly what I did. Without my phone, without the noise of everyone who’s ever loved me, I got to have this adventure that was mine and mine alone. I never realized how much I was missing just by being so busy. But nothing changed here while I was gone. Not really. It’s all the same. But I’m different.

  The comfort of home warms me completely. But I’m already trying to figure out where I’ll go next. And when.

  As the evening rolls into nighttime, and slideshow time becomes game time, everyone eventually has to get going – lest the worsening blizzard strand them all here. We may have made a Tuesday Night Dinner work, but a sleepover is out of the question.

  “I’ll see you in two days,” Mary says, hugging me. “Back to the grind.”

  School. Kids fresh off of weeks without structure.

  “And then, I want to hear all the gory details,” she adds, looking at me in her sly, Mary way.

  Jake and Mary leave hand-in-hand, chatting idly and quietly as they walk down the hall, toward my elevator as I’m struck with the sudden realization that they’re a couple. A full-fledged couple.

  After he’s zipped his coat and put his hat on, Charles walks over to give me a hug and kiss goodbye.

  “Lucy,” he says in a lowered voice. “That slideshow….”

  “What about it?” I ask him, instantly on guard. I saw the expression on his face when any picture of Oliver popped up.

  “You were so willing to go away like you did and take a chance on your life.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “I think that you might need to really figure out what that means now.”

  I pull back and blink at him, utterly confused. “What?”

  He smiles and picks up Tristan. “You figure it out, woman of the world.”

  When everyone’s gone, I curl up on the couch and listen to the quiet. I can’t believe they all came over here. And no matter how many times I asked people about what they’ve been up to, asked Marian about her honeymoon, Samantha about the new baby – everyone just kept steering the subject back to my trip. I’ve never been the center of discussion at our family dinners. Probably because I don’t do anything too exciting. Ever. Until now.

  I missed them all, but it’s good to know that I can leave, do something for myself and come back. Even though everyone’s lives have changed while I’ve been gone, we all come back together. Always.

  I think about Charles’s words. What is there to figure out?

  I went on my trip, I loved (almost) every moment of it, and now I’m back – better for having experienced it.

  As I stare at Major Nelson and Jeannie duking it out over her magical mishaps, I know. Of course I know. I know exactly what he means.

  I followed my heart when I took that trip. I listened to fate. I ran toward something that I needed. And now…I’m running away.

  walk up the grey paved walkway and through the oak-wood doors of the Bradley Fitzhugh-Simms Elementary School reenergized. I am forty-five minutes early and escape to the teacher’s lounge to finish my iced coffee and have my breakfast in silence. Though as all of the other teachers file in, I can see that enjoying a peaceful and quiet start to the new year at school will be impossible. I don’t see Mary, unfortunately.

  “Hi, Lucy,” Ian says, walking over to me, and sitting beside me. “How was your break?” he asks.

  I lean back and take another sip of my iced coffee, thinking how to describe it. “Fantastic,” I finally say. “Yours?”

  He rolls his eyes. “No offense. I mean, I know she’s related to you, but your cousin Courtney is a handful,” he says, exasperated.

  I laugh inwardly. This always happens.

  “I guess wedding bells aren’t in your future, then,” I say.

  “Definitely not,” he says. “I’m sorry again for going off with her when I agreed to be your date at your sister’s wedding. I know how much it meant to you.”

  I wave my hand dismissively. “It all worked out perfectly, actually,” I say, truly meaning it.

  When Ian goes to get himself another mug of coffee, I pull a business card out of my pants pocket. Last night, after finishing my laundry, I saw it sitting in the dryer – faded but still legible – Jessie’s number from Paris. When I picked it up, something stirred inside and I felt exactly the way I had when I’d boldly decided to go to London. I felt like the signs were screaming at me to do something. To take a chance again. To make my life happen and not just wait.

  I roll the card over and over again in my hands. I feel like I need to call him. But I have no idea how to get in touch with him. This piece of paper would be a start.

  I need to call him because…I like him. I do. No matter how things turned out, I met a guy and fell for him. Finding out the truth doesn’t change my feelings. Those, anyway, had been real the whole time.

  I check my watch. I still have twenty minutes until class begins. With knots in my stomach, I grab my new cell phone and dial her number – countr
y code first. I agree to the international charge and just wait.

  And wait.

  Finally it rings. On the fourth ring, the carefree, sweet voice of Oliver’s younger sister picks up. She sounds out of breath.

  “Jessie?” I ask, tentatively.

  I have no idea what’s going on around me in the teacher’s lounge. I am just staring at this piece of paper like it’s Jessie herself.

  “Yes, who’s this?” she asks.

  “Lucy. Lucy Gray,” I stammer. “I stayed with you over Christmas.”

  She says nothing at all. Oh God, she doesn’t remember me.

  “I ruined your countertop with my hair straightener,” I say, hoping that will jog her memory. “Which I still fully intend to pay you back for. I need your address.”

  This seems to trigger her memory, if her giggle is any indication. “Of course I remember you!” she exclaims happily. “The girl who made my brother smile – how could I forget?”

  At that, something tightens inside and I find myself smiling – not that she can see me.

  “You’ll have to excuse me,” she says. “I just ran in from a jog along the Seine. Still catching my breath.”

  Oh, of course, I think. A jog along the Seine. I laugh. She’s so easy to talk to.

  “I don’t have a lot of time,” I explain. “But…could I have your brother’s number?”

  “You want my brother’s number?” she repeats, like this is a completely odd request.

  “I just forgot to tell him something before I – before I left. And I had your number, so –”

  She hesitates and then laughs again. “He’s switching numbers all the time,” she finally says. “Because of his job. I really don’t have his most current one. In fact…I don’t know where he is right now. Super top secret assignment, if I’m not mistaken. A life-or-death matter.”

  A life-or-death matter? How is she sitting there jogging along the Seine and giggling like a school girl if her brother’s on a life-or-death assignment?

  “You know what?” she says after a moment. “Give me your number. And when he checks in, I’ll pass it along.”